John Staughton, Senior Reviewer

Caravan of Pain by Scott Alderman is a gritty and savagely honest account of the author’s epic dream come to life – a chaotic collaboration of metal’s biggest names and some of the most legendary tattoo artists on the planet. The author wasn’t just a backstage observer, but the organizer and originator of “Tattoo the Earth,” a tour like nothing that had ever been attempted. From the earliest brainstorming pitch sessions and potential disasters with scheduling to the chaos of rock star egos and downright raunchy tour anecdotes, this book covers ground you might expect – debauchery and all-around bad […]

A sprawling fantasy world of magic, mana, mystery, and mythology, Mirror of Reality by Alexander Schmid is a sword and sorcery adventure like few others. Pulling from myriad sources of legend and lore, along with original godheads, alternate universes, and super-powered technologies, this epic quest to save the Empire of Geb is a nonstop ride. The breakneck pace and action-packed sequences would be far more impactful after a heavy edit to the writing, as grammatical errors, run-on sentences, repetitive prose, cliche, and idiomatic language, inconsistent formatting, and lack of essential exposition all make the reading experience challenging, but the story […]

A comical spree of interstellar hijinks with genocidal stakes, Zeno’s Last Grain by Jay Gaskell is a wonderfully weird launchpad for the out-of-this-world Galaxy Marshals series. Spilling onto the page in a manic flood of sci-fi action, dumb luck, and unwarranted moxie, these are the misadventures of Jon Simmons, interstellar delivery man, as he rampages through space to clean up an epic mess of his own creation. The writing has as many plot holes as wormholes, the characters are goofy, and the prose would benefit from a merciless edit, but the endless stream of near-misses and sharply clever comebacks makes […]